


The Final Nail

by Locksnek



Series: Horrible AU [1]
Category: The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (TV)
Genre: (also in a multi-layered way), (in a multi-layered way), Emotional Abuse, Gen, Gore, Self-Harm, Violence, swearing (it's me writing SkekGra--so--)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:02:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24246946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Locksnek/pseuds/Locksnek
Summary: SkekGra the Conqueror has had enough of this UrRu showing up every time he's just trying to get his work done.An alternative narrative of how the nail came to be in SkekGra's cranium.  (AU to my own 'verse; canon is silent on the matter; so I didn't care to approach that in the tags.)
Series: Horrible AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1761754
Comments: 14
Kudos: 12





	The Final Nail

**Author's Note:**

> So there was a discussion about The Nail, as there has oft been in the fandom, and I offered the worst thing I could conjecture since I am A Person Who Has Some Issues. Here it is.

Knowing the UrRu was there tended to start as a bristling of feathers at the back of his head, the sense that someone was watching him magnified somewhat by the cursed connection he had to the creature, traveling up into his forebrain with that unwanted shame and guilt. Immediately after that, almost instantaneously, came rage at the intrusion, but the guilt was always there first. As though he’d–caught himself in the act, seen himself anew and found himself monstrous. That was the worst part of the whole ordeal.

SkekGra stopped mid-motion, the being splayed on the fallen tree wincing in anticipation and moaning a protest as though it just wanted him to get it over with. “Far from your Valley, aren’t you, Mystic?” he said between his teeth, without turning around.

“No farther than you are from your Castle, Skeksis.”

The Conqueror gave a slow, deep exhalation. That was true, both were far afield, in the mountains half an unum’s march southwest of Sog. What could he say to this dull creature to subdue its quaint wit, make it turn and go its own way without lecturing him or interrogating him or giving him that sad-eyed look at that was so (frightening) utterly exasperating? “I am here with purpose, cud-chewer, a thing you’d know little about. You wander like seeds in the wind.”

“They do refer to me as the Wanderer,” came the slow, dry response.

“Do they?” SkekGra tapped the head of the nail in his right hand with the hammer in his left hand, dryly. The fellow on the tree, three of its extremities already affixed thereto with the same sort of long, broad-headed nails, quivered and spat under its breath at the motion. “Very astute of them. I suppose you already know what they call me.”

“Your name and your deeds are known to the Mystics.”

SkekGra tried not to let this give him some measure of satisfaction–he should not care what those plodding shadows of the Skeksis thought–and quickly gave up. He would take his pride wherever it came. Unlike this discarded part of his being-of-origin, which seemed to pride itself in nothing. “Little matter, Wanderer, the Mystics cower in their hidey-hole like moss on a rock. My name is known to the Gelfling, and the Gelfling are our eyes and our ears and our hands in Skarith.”

“We are not in Skarith.”

“Precisely.” SkekGra laughed sharply, cutting it off before it tapered away into a bit of an undignified cackle. “Gelfling at home have cleaved to Skeksis, because we have acted upon them, shown them benevolence, given them knowledge and order. Gelfling at home believe that, say, this fellow here–” He casually patted the forearm of the mountain creature, just above the nail pinning it to the tree, causing it to yelp in pain. “–is a threat to Skarith. If need be, we will bring Gelfling here to finish off the last of these folk, to take what little they’ve cobbled together up here in this wretched thin air, establish an outpost if it seems useful for resource procurement or trade. And they’ll be glad to do it all. You, meanwhile–” 

Despite his more reasonable nature warning him not to goad the Mystic, SkekGra finally turned to face it. It was standing about ten paces away, looking at him with its usual dusty blue reproach. The Conqueror bared his fangs, just slightly. “You could have prevented this, you and all your wretched kind, but you don’t. You didn’t. You never have. You fail to act, while the world moves around you. I’d suggest you not reproach me for acting, when you and all you kind may as well not exist for all the good you do anyone.”  
  
“Fallacy,” the creature grumbled.

“What!?”

“You are…conflating action with goodness.” 

Well, shit. SkekGra could feel his wrath piling up, thin translucent sheets of thundering resentment (shame) folding and folding upon themselves just behind his eyes. His head pounded. “And what is inaction? By inaction, you have allowed all this, which you seem to deem ‘bad,’ to occur.” 

The Skeksis gestured indifferently back at the creature on the tree, some sort of mountain cousin to the rumored and reclusive Gruenak that supposedly dwelt many leagues below where they stood; insufferable creature, small as a Podling, a village official of some kind, which had fed SkekGra some sort of intolerable broth and had an awkward conversation with him in broken Gelfling. After several such meetings, the creature had made as plain as it could, in their mutual half-comprehension, that its folk wanted nothing to do with any Skeksis empire in distant Skarith. No tithes to Skeksis, no protection or knowledge from Skeksis, no honor to Skeksis, no security of belonging to Skeksis empire. SkekGra had been given free rein to negotiate as long as he cared to and decide how to proceed from there–these people, after all, were obscure and meaningless–and he’d simply set SkekNa and SkekLach on them, torching and stabbing everything there was to be torched and stabbed. The village leader or wise-person, or whatever it was he’d wasted several days yapping with, had been left to the Conqueror to deal with while his associates roved about the burned-out cave homes looking for any possible survivors (children quivering in outhouses, pets running baffled). He’d been nailing it to the fallen tree, trying to decide whether to leave it alive and gasping about the terror of the Skeksis to any ill-fortuned passerby, or to bleed it out over the tree and leave passersby to draw their own conclusions, when the UrRu–“his” UrRu, if one wanted to be nauseatingly technical about it–showed up. That one did have a knack for materializing at the most inconvenient times.

SkekGra’s UrRu gave him a long, doleful, vaguely baleful look. “What could I have done to stop this?”

The Skeksis tried to picture the equanimous, listless Mystics levying an army, or sending snipers to undercut Skeksis’ exploratory forays. He could not picture it. So he was…essentially in agreement with his annoying shadow, that UrRu couldn't control Skeksis, but they both seemed to be drawing quite different conclusions? 

“Hm.” SkekGra puffed out the feathers on his ruff, the slightly iridescent crest above his eyes flaring in aggravation, feeling as though he might have the upper hand here but also that he was walking into some trap. “Nothing. So why stand there now and watch me like a sad fizzgig? Are you such a masochist, that you care to witness the fallout of your own fucking laziness?”

The Conqueror turned back to the little village official on the tree, resumed his grip to drive the last nail in.

The Wanderer just–continued to look at him. 

Oh. So _that_ was what he could do. The terrible feeling ran up and down SkekGra’s spine and skull again, a response to affecting him from tailtip to eyelids, the shiver starting in his tail and going up and up through his unbent back and lodging behind his eyes–the very blood there, flowing behind his eyes, betrayed him, spreading the ugly feeling, the guilt and horror. His eyes pounded in time with his escalated pulse. How could he–how could he do such a thing, to someone so helpless, when he was–when he was _watching_ himself do that thing? This was not honorable. This was out of step with Thra. This was–

SkekGra bristled, turning his head back to snarl at the Mystic. “You really don’t have anything better to do?”

The Mystic stared at him implacably, sadly.

The Skeksis’ mind ran down a brief list of options. He could drive the final nail into the little village official, while the UrRu just watched him (shame on the UrRu, shame on him, shame on them both–that was a surprising thought, yet there it was). He could sit down and have a nice chat with his UrRu– _Hah!_ As if. He could attempt to frighten the UrRu off, and risk looking the fool if it would not leave, even risk incapacitating himself if he tried to injure it into leaving.   
  
  
“You’re as bad as me!” SkekGra heard himself say dramatically, whilst pointing an accusing talon at his Mystic, “If you just stand there watching while I do such things.”

The Mystic still said nothing, did not blink. The breeze rifled the short conifers and the mountain grass. Shit, the air was far too thin up here. The Conqueror was having a bit of trouble breathing. 

“You’re complicit!” This was fast getting out of SkekGra’s control, he recognized in the strategic layer of his mind, but he was known for his outbursts as much as for his stratagems. That was part of why he was fancied a bit dangerous even among his own kith. He mind was as organized as SkekOk’s catalog cards, but when he lost control, he–very much lost it. This needed to stop, this intolerable guilt that proximity to the Mystic was scaring up in his own brain. Guilt was the province of the cud-chewers, not of the Skeksis, not those who tore living flesh from bone. He turned away from the creature on the tree and swept toward the Mystic, half meaning to strike it (although he knew that would produce an effect of the same hue if not intensity in himself). “You want us to stop, then you fucking do something!” He crouched near eye-level with the UrRu, menacing, neck extended and tail lashing and spittle flying with each viciously articulated word, the crest above his eyes bristling. “You do something, you stop me. Coward! You can’t.”

The Mystic canted its head to the side, not seeming truly scared despite the threat display, but perhaps a bit–shocked. Its eyes were wide and bright.   
  
  
“ _You_ can’t stop me,” SkekGra snarled again, quietly, leaning forward and getting up in its face. That was the wrong idea. The waves of contempt, for himself, of shame, of unbearable guilt, washed over his brain so violently he nearly tumbled over. 

Ah! _Ah._ There it was, _that_ was the thing, the thing that came from the UrRu and poisoned him against himself, crawling clammily up his spine and through his brain like an over-inspired wave at high tide unexpectedly engulfing the ankles, breaking behind his eyes and spraying salt water against the backs of them. Right there, in the back-mid region of his brain, _that_ was where the mere discomfort of the proximity to this awful inversion of himself was translated by some terrible neurological or metaphysical alchemy into _shame_ at himself. 

Right there.

SkekGra belted out a hysterical laugh. “You’ve meddled with me for the last time.”

The UrRu began to look alarmed, as though it saw his intent in his eyes or felt it somewhere more obscure. “Can we just–”

“Talk!? No! No, Mystic, you’ve shown your weakness, and I won’t fucking let it pollute me.” SkekGra darted up the slant of the fallen tree, breaking its occupant’s little neck in the process (he wasn’t entirely sure, even later, whether he’d placed his foot intentionally or not), and stood above the UrRu, out of its reach. “This,” the Conqueror snarled, crouched with hammer and nail in hand, the alpine breeze blowing the feathered teal collar of his cloak against his zygomatic processes, “is not a weakness I’ll abide any fucking longer. You want to tag along, to see what you would do if you were me? You want to gawk at my deeds and find reason to condemn me? That’s all weakness, softness, that I couldn’t conceive of in my darkest fancies. You think it’s light, in you, though, don’t you? I’ll show you darkness, then, Mystic, you will fucking see.”

“SkekGra, please don’t–” The Mystic was trying to scrabble onto the leaning tree. Not only was it slow, it would need to navigate the dead creature nailed thereto in order to even reach SkekGra. 

“You’ve troubled my meditations one too many times, UrGoh,” the Conqueror snarled, though he didn’t think he’d _known_ what the four-armed bastard’s name was before then. He took the nail’s point between his right thumb and forefinger, positioned it over that damned spot, where he could feel the waves of horror arise. He took the hammer in his left hand. Terror swept over him like a sudden rush of dark-winged creatures, but, more, he was determined. He was in his power. He would show them, he would show them both, that the Conqueror would brook no guilt or condemnation or pity. 

He laughed as he drove the nail in and tumbled from the tree. In the instant before darkness closed in, there was horror in the also-tumbling eyes of his counterpart, a shorter tumble, and the smell of blood, and the smell of the breeze in the conifers.


End file.
